Wide-angle imaging is an important function in photography and projection, but it also places high demands on the design of the imaging components of a camera. To eliminate the coma caused by the focusing of large-angle incident light, traditional wide-angle camera lenses are composed of complex optical components. Here, we propose a planar camera for wide-angle imaging with a silicon nitride metalens array mounted on a CMOS image sensor. By carefully designing proper phase profiles for metalenses with intentionally introduced shifted phase terms, the whole lens array is capable of capturing a scene with a large viewing angle and negligible distortion or aberrations. After a stitching process, we obtained a large viewing angle image with a range of > 120 ∘ using a compact planar camera. Our device demonstrates the advantages of metalenses in flexible phase design and compact integration, and the prospects for future imaging technology.
The design of large-scale, high-numerical-aperture, and broadband achromatism is a big challenge in metalens research. In fact, many colorful imaging systems have RGB color filters, which means the achromatism only for RGB lights would be sufficient. Avoiding broadband achromatism is expected to greatly improve the working efficiency of metalenses. Nevertheless, a proper bandpass filter is necessary under a white light illumination in the metalens integrated imaging system. Here we propose a bandpass-filter-integrated multiwavelength achromatic metalens ( NA = 0.2 ), which is designed using a searching optimization algorithm to achieve the achromatism of RGB lights with high efficiencies. The bandpass filter is implemented by composite DBRs and defect layers, by which three desired wavelengths are selected out. The simulations and experiments on the filter-integrated metalens definitely show a good RGB achromatism. Further imaging experiments demonstrate a higher signal-to-noise ratio and resolution compared with the one without the filter. Our approach provides not only an RGB achromatic meta-imaging device but also a new route to access a highly efficient spectrum tailoring metasystem by incorporating bandpass filter designs.
Flat lenses, including metalens and diffractive lens, have attracted increasing attention due to their ability to miniaturize the imaging devices. However, realizing a large scale achromatic flat lens with high performance still remains a big challenge. Here, we developed a new framework in designing achromatic multi-level diffractive lenses by light coherence optimization, which enables the implementation of large-scale flat lenses under non-ideal conditions. As results, a series achromatic polymer lenses with diameter from 1 to 10 mm are successfully designed and fabricated. The subsequent optical characterizations substantially validate our theoretical framework and show relatively good performance of the centimeter-scale achromatic multi-level diffractive lenses with a super broad bandwidth in optical wavelengths (400–1100 nm). After comparing with conventional refractive lens, this achromatic lens shows significant advantages in white-light imaging performance, implying a new strategy in developing practical planar optical devices.
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